I read the last few posts from this string and have some questions and statements about some of them. Someone asked has there been any recent guidance from Lam's management?
It is my personal belief that companies don't care about their company's stock price with the one exception and that is, they are planning to raise capital through equity financing. If they don't need the stock market and investors, the company's attitude about stock price is no comment or moreover, no concern.
Lam, like virtually, every other listed company has consistently reinforced this attitude by ignoring individual analyst's downgrades and ignoring turmoils like Asia.
The company itself is in the best position to inform investors of any given situation, but almost always, decide not to (I sometimes laugh when a company's stock is down 6 points and I look for news stories to see what's going on, if I am lucky the company would have put out a story, but every time, if there is a story, it's about the price of tea in China and not about what's really going on).
I feel that this is the worst thing about being a small, individual investor. That is, the lack of getting timely, honest, straight forward, subjective or objective information from the company. Instead investors who are trying their best to make good, sound investment choices that do, indirectly and directly, help America are given a lot of bull shit from Wall Street that most of the time is based on how much money a Wall Street firm can make off the deal and not about the quality of the security. Maybe some day companies will start to deal with this problem.
Like always I could be missing something and that is why I am here. Do other investors think that they are given good information from the company? Or do you think that generally as investors we are not given enough information from the company? For example, just from the posts I have read in the last few minutes, investors were asking about: 1) The Ontrak Merger, how's it doing? 2) What about the new CEO, these are the main men/women right, they sure are paid like it, how's the new CEO doing? 3) The downgrade talking about the backlog, is that true or is the analyst full of it? 4) What about Asia, what's the company's opinion and if indeed the financial news media and analysts are all correct meaning technology is going to all go away until it disappears, what's the company going to do about it?
I have seen no companies in this sector address any of the concerns brought on by the so called Asian crisis. It's not just Lam.
Regardless of why they don't comment it sure makes it tough on investors. (When I talk about commenting I am not talking about comments that could hurt the competitive advantage of the company, and let's face facts, when a company's stock goes from $72 in the Summer of 95 to $22 today or from $68 last summer to 22 today it just might be time to do something to reassure investors that you are still there thinking about your company's stock price and not just the strategic plan of the company that most likely is obscure from most investors.)
Also, just a few comments about a couple of other posts. Someone stated that Applied is down 6% one day and up 8% the next. I feel this is mainly, there are many other reasons I'm sure, do to the NASDAQ market makers. They have a vested interest in driving prices up fast and down fast, it creates volume and revenue for them. I think this is the main reason a stock like Lam can be $68 one day and a couple of months later be $22.
About Coke and Applied having different valuations. A third of all the capital in the stock markets is controlled by the mutual fund companies, than a significant amount more is controlled by the banks and insurance companies, and pension plans, than most of the rest by the wealthy. End result, valuations are determined by a very small number of people of which mostly work on Wall Street. If they think Coke is worth 4 times that of Applied even though the outlook is about the same for both, than that's the way it will be. But don't worry, I am sure they will all change their minds shortly because that's how Wall Street makes money: Turnover.
Sincerely,
Stock Watcher. |
